Watching, as the waxy flowers fallinto the scattered gravel of the summer garden; it seems the world, the weather anda clouded view conspire to dampthe spirits. Her fingers leave the glass.

She turns into the room to workanother minor, tepid miracle.

Suzie Grogan 2012

I have been struggling to concentrate on any one aspect of my rather heavy workload at the moment. Marketing Dandelions and Bad Hair Days is a priority and I have another book to research but there are lots of those more routine things that seem to sap the life out of the working day. Time management is a real challenge. Procrastination is the very devil to resist.

Earlier in the year, when we had a spell of fine weather, I got far more work done than I have recently, when I am forced indoors by teeming rain and cold wind, rather than sitting at the keyboard voluntarily. I can’t sit out in the garden with an afternoon cup of tea, catching up with the reading I long to do. My mood lowers with the cloud, which then obscures my ability to see what is important and get it done. The simplest tasks are made harder by the fog that seems to creep onto the pages of whatever I am trying to write.

As with the flowers in the poem, before things have a chance to blossom, to come to fruition and reach their natural end, they are tarnished and slip away. There is no sense of satisfaction, no enthusiasm to move to the next thing on the list and end the day with a sense of achievement. To complete a task brings nothing but a sigh of relief and a sense of a day lost.

This British summer has come to feel malicious; it has washed out weddings, fêtes, and festivals and swept filth and devastation into people’s homes. It seems to laugh at us, at our thoughts of drought and hosepipe bans and our summer of celebration and sport.